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Andor was one of the great TV triumphs of the decade. Here's why.

Andor was one of the great TV triumphs of the decade. Here's why.

Andor has been one of the great television triumphs of this decade. The Disney+ series, which has concluded with the release of the second season's final episodes, was pitched as a prequel to the 2016 Star Wars film Rogue One, explaining how Rebel spy Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) ended up on a heroic final mission. But as it's unfolded, the show, created by screenwriter and filmmaker Tony Gilroy, has become the main event. It's deeply intricate, thrilling, and heartbreaking. To mark the finale, here are nine things Andor got right.
Warning: this story contains spoilers for the season two finale.
It reinvented Star Wars
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The many Star Wars films and subsequent television shows in George Lucas' blockbuster fantasy galaxy were made for children. Andor is the first project made for adults. Gilroy has described it as 'a definitive work about revolution', tracking Cassian's progress from apolitical thief to committed operative over five years while the rebellion takes shape and the authoritarian machinery of the Empire seeks to suppress it.
Whether as a heist thriller, an espionage drama, or a study of guerilla warfare, the show leant into complicated, contested spaces.
The Force was not with them
Traditionally Stars Wars stories are about heroic, often super-powered individuals, beginning with Tatooine teenager turned Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, pulling off extraordinary feats. The space wizards are nowhere to be seen in Andor, with but a hint of their spiritual side quietly seeping into the second season. Ordinary people mattered in Andor. The show details how oppression slowly, inexorably builds, and the different ways that individuals choose to defy the Empire's fascistic control. Not everyone had to blow up the Death Star to be heard.
The infrastructure mattered
Andor showed the messy, slow-turning steps required to build a rebellion. The initial wave of dissidents and saboteurs had to be put to work. Funding had to be acquired. The politicians and the partisans had to move in tandem.
The show's Rebel spymaster, Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard), choreographed an entire movement, and he did it while being evasive, cynical, and sometimes untrustworthy. The cost paid by various Rebels was always felt. As Luthen put it, 'I burn my decency for someone else's future.'
The Empire had an org chart
In parallel to the Rebels, Andor charted the workings of the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB), the secret police tasked with negating democratic institutions, cracking down on dissent, and eventually using military might to destroy opposition. The Emperor, and his enforcer Darth Vader, were never seen. But some senior ISB officers attended meetings the dictator was at and brought orders back. Andor focused on the people who carried out those orders, whether out of zealotry, misplaced duty or simple workplace expectations. Obsessive ISB supervisor Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) became one of the show's most compelling characters.
The real world was always present
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It was impossible to watch Andor and not draw connections to real-life events. For some that meant looking to the war in Gaza, while others saw historic precedents. A major storyline in the second season was the Empire cracking down on the planet of Ghorman, with a view to seizing direct control for destructive mass mining.
From the clothes to the language, Ghorman drew on France's experiences under Nazi occupation in World War II. There was no one correct interpretation, all were valid. What was unquestionable, however, was how harrowing the Empire's stage-managed massacre eventually was.
It was a tactile experience
One of the show's true unsung heroes was production designer Luke Hull. His work permeated every scene, invoking grand spaces that conveyed power and authority, but also makeshift bases and everyday residences. So many items had a casual, scuffed utility. This was a Star Wars experience where people had a home life, and the plausible homes that went with that. The science-fiction technology was often not overwhelming and screen-based, but rather mechanical. The communications console secretly operated by Luthen's unyielding offsider, Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau), was a mass of plugs and knobs.
The actors got to feast
Gilroy assembled an almighty writers' room, including his brother Dan (Nightcrawler) and Beau Willimon (House of Cards). The episodes had an urgent, uneasy momentum, but at the right point they would feature a memorable monologue. Cassian's adoptive mother, Maarva Andor (Fiona Shaw), delivered a posthumous anti-Empire speech that literally started a riot.
My favourite? Forest Whitaker's paranoid militant Saw Gerrera huffing starship fuel and exhorting a young Rebel to embrace the madness of rebellion: 'You're right here, and you're ready to fight!'
The pay-offs were sublime
In season one, Cassian's first mission for Luthen is helping steal an imperial payroll. The participants include a young idealist, Karis Nemik (Alex Lawther), who is fighting the Empire by writing a manifesto that articulates its tactics. Like most of the team, Nemik doesn't make it, and his manuscript goes to Cassian. At the show's end, a senior ISB officer, sensing that their control is failing, ruefully listens to a recording that has been illegally circulating through the galaxy. It is Nemik reading his manifesto.
Uncompromising to the end
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The body count was always high in Andor. The odds were so often against the nascent rebels and the show's stormtroopers could actually shoot straight. From early on it was apparent that if a character hadn't featured in Rogue One, the odds were against them surviving the series.
Luthen was clear in his belief that he wouldn't live to see his plans come to fruition, and when the time came the storytelling adhered to that. That Luthen killed his own agent inside the ISB, to preserve the top-secret material he'd just handed over, and then attempted to take his own life when Dedra came calling, was grim and fitting.
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Bambi in the public domain: A smart and bloody take on a childhood favourite
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Bambi in the public domain: A smart and bloody take on a childhood favourite

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But Granny has dementia and in her vague moments, seems to be psychically linked to the deer, and it turns out there's a strong family link to the beast and the reason it is haunting the woods and the humans, any humans, it sees as being destroyers. Dan Allen and Rhys Warrington's film is fun, if you like horror, but it's not the tongue-in-cheek horror that usually hits the multiplex cinemas. Bambi doesn't throw off witty one-liners as he despatches his prey, it is kill-and-move-on. The film's technical team is a small crew, the end credits were mercifully short, but they achieve good believable work with their CGI, keeping their scenes dark, only revealing the horror creatures when they need to. Perhaps the small tech crew and judicious withholding is the secret to good CGI, I thought as I recalled how many thousands of names were in the technical credits to the second Wonder Woman or The Flash movies, and remember how butchered and rushed those film's CGI looked. There's been an exciting trend in low-budget horror movies recently when iconic intellectual property, usually the ones associated with sweetness, hits that magic number where it enters into the public domain. Like the 2023 film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, where Christopher Robin has neglected his animal friends after leaving for college and so they go on a killing rampage. These twisted Winnie films - there's been a bunch of spin-offs and also-rans in the past two years - arrived on the scene just as AA Milne's original book, published in 1926, passed the 95-year mark required for the US public domain. 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Except this deer, with his enormous antlers, lives in a woods being poisoned by men dumping green carcinogens in the water, the same men running over the buck and his mate with their trucks as they leave. We'll come back to that buck in a moment, but in Rhys Warrington's screenplay, we also have a young mum caring for her child. It is Xana (Roxanne McKee), mum to the bookish Benji (Tom Mulheron), who has just been let down once again by Benji's dad Simon (Alex Cooke), who had promised to take his son to a weekend with Simon's relatives in the country. Rather than disappointing her son, Xana packs Benji into a taxi and head off into the deep forrest home that grandmother Mary (Nicola Wright) lives in. It seems that Simon isn't the only disappointment in the family, as granny's home is full of Benji's awful relatives, like his obnoxious cousin Harrison (Joseph Greenwood) and Harrison's uncaring step-mother Harriet (Samira Mighty). But, as in all good fairy tales, the taxi ride to Granny's house is interrupted, not by a wolf, but by an enormous set of antlers smashing into the taxi head-on. The taxi driver is killed as the giant deer, feral with razor sharp teeth that drip blood, stomps the car's cabin, and Xana and Benji escape, running to Granny's house. But Granny has dementia and in her vague moments, seems to be psychically linked to the deer, and it turns out there's a strong family link to the beast and the reason it is haunting the woods and the humans, any humans, it sees as being destroyers. Dan Allen and Rhys Warrington's film is fun, if you like horror, but it's not the tongue-in-cheek horror that usually hits the multiplex cinemas. Bambi doesn't throw off witty one-liners as he despatches his prey, it is kill-and-move-on. The film's technical team is a small crew, the end credits were mercifully short, but they achieve good believable work with their CGI, keeping their scenes dark, only revealing the horror creatures when they need to. Perhaps the small tech crew and judicious withholding is the secret to good CGI, I thought as I recalled how many thousands of names were in the technical credits to the second Wonder Woman or The Flash movies, and remember how butchered and rushed those film's CGI looked. There's been an exciting trend in low-budget horror movies recently when iconic intellectual property, usually the ones associated with sweetness, hits that magic number where it enters into the public domain. Like the 2023 film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, where Christopher Robin has neglected his animal friends after leaving for college and so they go on a killing rampage. These twisted Winnie films - there's been a bunch of spin-offs and also-rans in the past two years - arrived on the scene just as AA Milne's original book, published in 1926, passed the 95-year mark required for the US public domain. The juggernaut that is Disney couldn't stop enterprising filmmakers jumping on this adaptation bandwagon when Steamboat Willie, the first on-screen appearance of Mickey Mouse, entered public domain in 2014, with recent horror films like Mickey's Slayhouse and Mouseboat Massacre hitting - well, they're not hitting cinemas, they're mostly appearing on horror streaming services like Shudder. Even my childhood favourite TV show characters The Banana Splits went on a malfunctioning animatronic killing spree in 2019's The Banana Splits Movie. Bambi: The Reckoning takes, yes, your sweet childhood memory, though for legal reasons, it draws from author Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods, and not the Disney adaptation that they still very much hold all rights for. Director Dan Allen starts the film with a rustic animation that certainly nods towards the Disney drawings, showing over the title credits a young fawn losing his mother and growing up into a giant buck. Except this deer, with his enormous antlers, lives in a woods being poisoned by men dumping green carcinogens in the water, the same men running over the buck and his mate with their trucks as they leave. We'll come back to that buck in a moment, but in Rhys Warrington's screenplay, we also have a young mum caring for her child. 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‘Timeless' Disney musical set to enchant Perth audiences
‘Timeless' Disney musical set to enchant Perth audiences

Perth Now

timea day ago

  • Perth Now

‘Timeless' Disney musical set to enchant Perth audiences

After a 30-year wait, audiences finally have the chance to see Disney's Beauty and the Beast in Perth as this musical tale as old as time is performed at Crown Theatre from Thursday night. Just as thrilled by the prospect are the stars of the Australian touring production Shubshri Kandiah and Brendan Xavier, who are set to enchant audiences of all ages in their title roles as Belle and Beast. 'It's really such a timeless tale, and the fact that Beauty and the Beast has never been to Perth before makes it so exciting,' Kandiah said. Credit: Ross Swanborough / The West Australian, Shubshri Kandiah and Brendan Xavier, the stars of Beauty and the Beast in Kings Park, Perth Xavier said Beauty and the Beast had 'everything you want and expect from a Disney musical; lavish costumes, incredible sets, high energy dance numbers, world-class music played by a live orchestra. It's steeped in nostalgia'. Perth-born and raised Kandiah arrived at her hometown in style thanks to prominent Perth designer Steph Audino, who created a custom spectacular yellow dress for the occasion. Audino spent more than a month designing and creating the contemporary homage to the famous yellow gown Belle wears when she first dances with Beast. 'I love this bespoke Steph Audino piece; the colours, textures. . . it's the perfect nod to a modern-day Belle,' Kandiah said.

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